I will be participating in a panel with Emily Baker, Ian Biddle and Freya Jarman at the EMP Pop Conference in Seattle. Our panel is on Sunday 17 April and my paper is entitled 'A Blank Space Where You Write Your Name: Taylor Swift’s Early Late Voice'. Abstract below. Taylor Swift’s songs invite listeners to… Continue reading Upcoming presentation: ‘A Blank Space Where You Write Your Name’
Tag: youth
New article on Patti Smith published
My essay 'Words from the New World: Adventure and Memory in Patti Smith’s Late Voice’ has been published in the book Patti Smith: Outside, edited by Claude Chastagner (Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2015). ABSTRACT: Patti Smith’s late work is invariably connected by critics and fans to the work of her ‘classic’ era (the 1970s… Continue reading New article on Patti Smith published
‘Pop pollution’ as ‘pornography’? I can’t even
Last week, the philosopher Roger Scruton used a 10-minute talk on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Point of View’ programme to rail, once more, against popular culture. His talk, entitled ‘The Tyranny of Pop’, attacked what he sees as the denigration of culture, social interaction and education by the ‘banal melodies’, ‘mechanical rhythms’ and general ubiquity of… Continue reading ‘Pop pollution’ as ‘pornography’? I can’t even
New book: The Late Voice
This week sees the publication of my third book, The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music. The book is being published by Bloomsbury Academic initially in a hardback edition. A cheaper paperback edition will be published at a later date. From the book's blurb: "Popular music artists, as performers in the public… Continue reading New book: The Late Voice
New publication: “Across the Evening Sky”: The Late Voices of Sandy Denny, Judy Collins and Nina Simone
My essay 'Across the Evening Sky: The Late Voices of Sandy Denny, Judy Collins and Nina Simone' has been published in the book Gender, Age and Musical Creativity, edited by Catherine Haworth and Lisa Colton (Ashgate, 2015). ABSTRACT: This chapter explores the work of three female musicians – Sandy Denny, Judy Collins and Nina Simone… Continue reading New publication: “Across the Evening Sky”: The Late Voices of Sandy Denny, Judy Collins and Nina Simone
to be young
To be young is to throw one's body out into a time that is no time at all, but life, world, and space. Améry, On Aging, 15
time gathered up
Those who say that even the young posess and know time, even though they thoughtlessly live for the future dimension, which is also time, such persons have never yet had the experience of feeling for themselves that time is nothing-but-time. This future into which the young tumble ... is, to be sure, not time at… Continue reading time gathered up
Across the evening sky
the need for reflection, for making sense of our transient condition, is time's paradoxical gift to us, and possibly the best consolation for its ultimate power Eva Hoffman, Time (Profile, 2011), p. 11
I wish I had a heart like this. I wish I had that heart making circle after circle as when, in childhood, I sent stones skipping over the water, skipping over. The rest of your life is headed your way! Ko Un, 'At Eunpa Reservoir' (First Person Sorrowful)
Late Voice 